In this pass the painting art game, each student contributes to the final work of art.
By Jennifer Baxter [Jennifer is a teacher at International School Lausanne in Switzerland.]
Objectives:
- To see that objects don’t have a set color, our imagination is limitless.
- Cooperative art.
What You Need:
- tempera paint in many colors–enough for each student to have 1 pot of paint in a different color
- white painting paper
- brushes
- large surface for at least 10 children to be gathered in a circle or in a line as they paint
What You Do:
- This project can be used after reading a story, poem, etc. Animals work best as subjects for this activity.
- Imagine that you had just read a story about an elephant (as an example).
- As a group have the children make a list of all the parts of an elephant and give two adjectives to describe each part: a long, skinny trunk; four short legs; big, floppy ears; etc.
- Next have each student go to his/her place in the painting circle or line and pick up one pot of paint.
- Now, using the list of descriptions have the students paint one part of the elephant at a time (you read each description.)
- After painting one part of the elephant say “pass the painting” and the student passes his paint pot to the person next to him.
- You say the next part of the elephant to paint, they paint that part and then you say, “pass the painting.”
- Continue until each part of the elephant is painted.
- When the painting is complete the elephant might have a pink trunk, four blue legs, green ears, etc.
- After the main animal is painted give the kids 1 or 2 minutes to add any details such as landscape, etc to the picture using any colors they want.
